Hold Congress Accountable

About FreedomConnector

Find activists, groups, and events right in your own neighborhood. Join FreedomConnector to get involved and learn more about key issues threatening our economic freedom. Whether you’re looking for like-minded people, trying to boost your existing group’s impact, or simply trying to stay up on current events, FreedomConnector is the place to start. See what’s happening in your state today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

Gov. Kasich Pretends Obamacare is Not Obamacare

Ohio Governor John Kasich is now insisting the Obamacare Medicaid expansion “is not about Obamacare,” in an attempt to message his fight for new deficit spending around conservative opposition and months of bad news about President Obama’s unpopular 2010 health law.

Expanding Medicaid – an ineffective entitlement program that already consumes nearly half of Ohio’s budget – to able-bodied childless adults under the age of 65 is a key component of Obamacare, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

“Medicaid expansion is no different than the current Medicaid program, and to try to tie Medicaid to Obamacare, I don’t see the connection,” Gov. Kasich told reporter Joe Vardon last week.

“I mean it may have been provided in there, but it was John Roberts, the Republican chief justice appointed by President (George W.) Bush, who said states can have the option to extend their Medicaid coverage,” Gov. Kasich added in his interview with Vardon.

Gov. Kasich has been making similarly ridiculous statements for months. In a February 6 RedState post, he wrote that expanding Medicaid as called for in Obamacare would “limit further damage from Obamacare.”

Kasich was far more concerned about entitlement spending, bureaucracy, and the national debt before bigger government meant reelection support from the Ohio Hospital Association and other lobbyists looking for more taxpayer money.

Responding to Obamacare’s passage, on March 22, 2010 Kasich wrote, “In the end, the federal government will just rack up higher deficits and go deeper in debt, leaving future generations to pick up the tab.”

“Ohio government spending will go up also, adding to an already bleak budget picture,” candidate Kasich warned. “Instead of letting states develop innovative solutions to their respective challenges, new federal mandates will require more Medicaid spending and stick states with large and unsustainable costs.”

“Government shouldn’t be making promises it can’t keep – especially when it’s more than $14.5 trillion in the hole,” Governor Kasich said on August 20, 2011, when the federal government was in a pit of debt $2.2 trillion shallower than it is today.

Click here to listen!
If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate, what next?
My prediction is the mandate could very easily rise from the grave in a new form, namely, the "conservative" idea of giving everybody a new universal health care tax credit, coupled with a policy called "auto-enrollment."
I call it a soft mandate, and it’s arguably as bad as the original.

The countdown has begun.The time of year normally reserved for excitement only among baseball fans and out of school students has an added political component that's unusual even for a presidential election year: a nation breathlessly awaiting a Supreme Court decision that could swing that election.

As the third part of our series “How to Beat ObamaCare”, FreedomWorks’s own health care policy expert Dean Clancy sat down with Wisconsin State Senator & certified pediatric nurse practitioner Leah Vukmir to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare. In just thirty minutes, Dean & Leah discussed repealing and replacing ObamaCare with true patient-centered care, how Wisconsin and other states are handling the health care exchanges, and how to take control from the government and give it back to consumers.

Republicans are preparing their course of action as they await the Supreme Court’s highly-anticipated ruling on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. The disastrous health care overhaul bill should be declared unconstitutional, but unfortunately, not all Republicans want it to be gutted in its entirety. Some prominent Republicans are pledging to preserve the so-called most “popular” provisions even if the monstrous law is overturned.

I'm not normally in the habit of rewarding leftist blogs with links or mentions that drive up their traffic, but today I can't resist.Here in Oregon, owing to the large population of liberal voters in our urban centers, one of the most followed blogs is Blue Oregon. Think of Blue Oregon as a sort of ThinkProgress on a state level.

UPDATE (6/25):
We now believe the Supreme Court will publish its health care decision at around 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, June 28th. Click here to follow our coverage live from the Supreme Court steps:
http://www.ustream.tv/user/freedomworks
+++
ORIGINAL POST (6/20):

Of all the health care issues facing policymakers, the “pre-existing conditions problem” may be the most difficult to solve. What are pre-existing conditions? They’re simply long-term ailments that make it more difficult or expensive to purchase health insurance.

The provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that requires health insurance companies to let children stay on their parents’ policy up to age 26, has recently figured prominently in the news. Most Democrats enthusiastically support it, and a few Republicans do as well, arguing that it has already helped 2.5 million young adults gain health insurance, and will “help” many more in the future.